Best Bakery and place to get candy, sweets and desserts: Halepaska's Bakery

A bakery born out of one mother's charitable goodwill has carried on for nearly the entire life of one of her sons: 66-year-old co-owner Tom Halepaska.

The 65-year-old Halepaska's Bakery has grown significantly from a staff consisting of Halepaska's mom, dad and three part-time employees to 46 employees in two locations baking 2,000 dozen cookies a week.

"Nothing happens overnight," Halepaska said about his business. "This is just a culmination of a bunch of hard work by my wife (Barbara) and I."

During Christmas time, the bakery is churning out 17,000 dozen cookies, according to Halepaska's estimates.

But 44 years ago Halepaska was thinking of other lines of work - like entering the oil field.

"My mom said, 'Why don't you give this a try? We sure need some help.' And here I am 44 years later," Halepaska said with a chuckle.

When he came in, he said his mother was used to doing things by sight. It was up to her son to quantify her recipes in order to create consistency within their products.

"If we can deliver consistently they'll come back consistently," he said. "Why they come in the first place? Because, we try to do a good job. Why do they keep coming back? Because we do a good job."

Halepaska, who is a master baker, said that over the years, he has seen food fads come and go, such as bagels and muffins, among others.

The latest fad, cupcakes, has stuck around longer than he thought they would - not that he's complaining.

The customers who Halepaska and his staff work with are sometimes multigenerational, stretching back decades.

"We commonly do 25th and 50th anniversary cakes for people who we did their wedding cakes for," Halepaska said. "We've done birthday cakes for their kids. One of our smaller slogans is 'We're not necessarily baking cakes, we're baking memories' because of the events in people's lives, and each year they have the cake from us."